Miguel’s days just keep getting worse and worse. Creative Staff:
Story: Peter David
Art: Will Sliney
What They Say:
Bidding war! Spider-Man 2099 and the Amazing Spider-Man’s worlds collide when Alchemax and Parker Industries are caught in a bidding war for a valuable contract!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Spider-Man 2099 has been all over the map and as we get to the penultimate issue of the series, it still largely feels that way. While it continues to look good and has plenty of interesting moments to it, the lack of a larger narrative that feels cohesive continues to be a real problem for it, especially when you just want to sink your teeth into a good Miguel story, either in or out of costume. With him now back in 2015, he’s ready to get back to what he has to deal with there, all while unaware for the moment that the Maestro has followed him back as well and has landed in New Mexico. For better or worse, that storyline is pretty much ignored here in favor of events in New York City, and you’re mostly left wondering how it’s going to impact things going forward as a seed moment for something larger.
Miguel’s biggest problem that he has at the moment is knowing how badly the world of the future has changed and now he’s worrying about what Alchemax will do that will cause it, and whether he’s responsible for it in some way, either in the future or simply because of his presence. It’s a decent little paradox issue that he talks about with Parker himself, since the two have plenty to talk about in general but also because Alchemax is in competition with Parker Industries for a prison complex contract and Miguel is concerned that what Liz has come up with through her team may be one of the triggering factors.There’s some decently seeded stuff in there with it all, from the new member introduced to the company and to how Parker may not be seeing the real threat that Liz and Alchemax represents, which will cause problems later. Again, a decent seeding moment, but will it truly be exploited since the book is ending?
This installment also spends a good bit of time with Miguel trying to help Tempest as she struggles with her issues due to the cancer, which involves some real problems in handling her mother. It’s a storyline that’s gotten almost no play for nearly the whole series at this point, so it’s kind of a forced entry into things as he has a cure from the future that he’s secretly applying to her while she sleeps. It’s certainly creepy when you get down to it, even if you can’t think of a better way to do it, but the end result in the short term is a cured Tempest. That has its own moral issues to deal with, but it plays to the supervillain side well enough as not long after a lot of drinking to celebrate, and Miguel avoiding her drunken advances, her body begins to transform into what will be his final opponent of the series next issue.
In Summary:
My enjoyment of Spider-Man 2099 is still certainly here as I do like a lot of pieces of this, but the book as a whole still continues to frustrate me because it had so much potential after having the character brought into play back during the Superior Spider-Man saga. This installment at least brings Parker in for a bit – and Spot! – and that helps to connect things a bit more amid all that’s going on, and post-Spider-Verse. But there’s also just this unease that it’s weirdly spinning its wheels before the end, making you feel like a lot of things are being set up, but that the potential for them to play out may not be realized. Either way, I’ve just been glad to get a taste of this particular character and his origin timeline again even for a little while.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Marvel Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: April 8th, 2015
MSRP: $3.99
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